Organization Projects – Page 3

Organizing DVDs

I’ve started gathering the piles of discs, stacks of cases, and boxes full of DVDs from around the house and sorting them into CD binder pages.

Some movies are set aside to donate to the thrift store (that benefits our local hospice); the empty cases will be listed on FreeCycle; and other discs are boxed up to return to friends.

All the discs are being stored in a nondescript, PVC-free 3-ring binder containing one set of CD binder pages:

I find the process of moving the DVDs to be slow going, yet gratifying. (Thankfully I have a little helper! “Many hands make light work.”) I anticipate fewer scratched disks and no more piles of discs scattered throughout the house. And, oh, the space — I have a whole shelf to fill!

And about 100 more DVDs to move over. Where’s my daughter?! I need some help.

A Simple Upgrade

Yesterday’s simple organization project:

A new shower curtain and rollerball shower curtain rings to freshen up the bathroom and add a hint of sophistication.

So much better than those cheap plastic rings reminiscent of college, don’t you think?

Replacing Those BPA-Laced Lids

One of the first tasks in my quest to organize our ~~life~~ house was to get the BPA out of our kitchen cupboards, something I’ve been meaning to do for quite some time.

Last fall we organized our pantry, put most of our dry goods into giant mason jars, and labeled them with liquid chalk pens:

We’ve loved and maintained this system. Unfortunately, regular canning lids contain BPA — that’s certainly not family and environmentally friendly! We needed to get rid of those lids and replace them with a BPA-free alternative.

Luckily we already owned just that: the plastic, BPA-free Tattler reusable lids, left over from canning applesauce this past fall. Time to get those lids on our bell jars.

Our daughter and I went through and tossed the BPA-laced lids,

replacing them with the Tattler ones:

A quick project that’s important for the health of our family.

On an Organization Mission

For the past three weeks I have been decluttering, organizing, and donating items by the trunk-full and it’s just the beginning. Quite frankly, I’ve barely made a dent in the chaos! Seeing my house, I am not sure you can tell I’ve done anything.

I have several organization-related goals for this year:
– Pare down what we have, keeping just the things we love and frequently use.
– Develop systems for organizing and controlling the clutter.
– Spend several minutes every day maintaining these systems.

My goals sound so idyllic and simple. If only that were the case!

Here’s what I’ve done already:
– Reorganized our bedroom closet and pared down my wardrobe
I’ve gotten rid of the t-shirts from high school, the jeans that no longer fit, the gazillion socks I never wear. I’ve started replacing worn clothes with more high quality items. My wardrobe may be smaller, but it now only contains essentials. Plus, I’ve organized the space around it so it’s more tidy. Still need to do: buy a larger, more sturdy hamper. (Our current one is from graduate school!)

– Organized our dressers
What a mess they were before:

Instead of stuffing or stacking the clothes in our dressers, I’ve gone through and neatly folded or rolled the clothes and lined them up so we can see everything (thanks to my friend Alissa for the awesome tip!):

We’ve all discovered clothes we didn’t realize we owned! It’s been two weeks and the drawers are still tidy. I’m hopeful this will continue.

Here are some areas I want to focus on:

Books:
We need to donate or sell books that we’ve only read once and probably won’t read again. We won’t even notice their absence and if we do end up wanting to read them again, there’s always the library! We also have many boxes of books stored away. At some point, we’re going to have to go through them and donate those too.

Compact Discs:
We have hundreds of cds piled on shelves and packed away in boxes that we’d love to have access to. I hope to move all of these cds over to an external hard-drive and load them onto our iPod (or into Amazon Cloud Drive), so we can actually enjoy the music we own.

Movies:
I plan to donate or sell all of the movies we don’t love or watch frequently. Also many of our movies are available for free streaming with Amazon Prime. Why do we have them cluttering up the house when we don’t need to?! Out they go! (Should Amazon remove them from streaming in the future, we can always buy them again. I’m okay with possibly paying $10 later to have more space in the house now.) I plan to store the remaining discs (that we love and want to keep!) in binders so they will take up less space and be easily accessible!

Kitchen counter and table paper piles:
Oh, we tend to be inadvertent hoarders:

Anywhere there is a clear space it quickly becomes covered with mail, magazines, books, kids toys, art supplies, half-finished projects, you name it. Ah, the clutter!

Just because we live in a very small house, doesn’t mean it has to feel full. I want to come up with organizing systems to ensure that everything has a place.

Now, I believe the real challenge will be to keep the momentum up through the year. I have a lot of work ahead of me!

Another Fabric Dying Project

After not having a bedskirt on the queen sized mattress in the house for eight years, we decided to shake things up and finally check this one off the to-do list!

Our daughter’s bedroom before, without the bedskirt

A friend gave us a bedskirt that had been slightly stained by their bed frame.

We decided to dye it (using the same dye and process as the pink sheets project).

We left the color choice to our daughter who shocked us with her choice of purple.

Yes, you read that correctly.

She actually picked pink first, but mama vetoed that. Too much pink in that room. We needed something to complement it. I suggested orange. She choose purple. And that’s that.

Adorable!

Curious about the rest of our daughter’s room? Click here to read about how we transformed this space from a messy storage room into a playful little girl’s room.